RalphTrimble
TVWBB Diamond Member
Recently I pulled my Raspberry Pi out of my Heater Meter to experiment using it as a media center and boy was I surprised! I installed the FREE XBMC (app and OS bundled together in one simple image) on a spare SD card and she booted right up. Plugged right into my flat screen via HDMI and after configuring the network path(s) to my media it was playing flawless 1080P video with surround sound audio without a hitch! Incredible for a device not much bigger than a credit card! The only bummer was that my TV doesn't repeat digital audio from HDMI sources to the digital output so my surround sound receiver was left out of the loop. (it's a real pain that TV's do that) I've read that the rPi has a header that may be able to put out digital audio but I haven't figured that out yet.... At any rate, the rPi itself did a wonderful job as a media center PC and it was simple and fast to setup, oh, and FREE....
Next spring I have plans to setup a garden controller using a rPi that will retrieve the weather forecast online and water your garden accordingly, or allow you to log in through the internet and control your soaker hose or emitters manually. So no more guessing at the weather and setting a dumb timer before you take off for vacation only to come home and find your garden has been over/under watered. This happens to me several times each summer when I get away, if you screw up bad on the guestimate you can screw up your garden for the whole year... Next year I am done with that, I figure if my smoker is on the internet then my garden should be too....
So I thought I would start a general Raspberry Pi thread to share what I am doing with this neat little computer and hope to hear about some cool things the rest of your folks are doing with them, besides running your BBQ pits....
Next spring I have plans to setup a garden controller using a rPi that will retrieve the weather forecast online and water your garden accordingly, or allow you to log in through the internet and control your soaker hose or emitters manually. So no more guessing at the weather and setting a dumb timer before you take off for vacation only to come home and find your garden has been over/under watered. This happens to me several times each summer when I get away, if you screw up bad on the guestimate you can screw up your garden for the whole year... Next year I am done with that, I figure if my smoker is on the internet then my garden should be too....
So I thought I would start a general Raspberry Pi thread to share what I am doing with this neat little computer and hope to hear about some cool things the rest of your folks are doing with them, besides running your BBQ pits....